Sex in a Sidecar (10 page)

In the morning I dug out the Yellow Pages. “I've got to get Big Red towed to the garage.” Jimmy's name for the pickup just popped out. I could have bitten my tongue off for using it.

“Get rid of it,” Clay ordered. “I'll buy you something new or you can drive the Miata.”

The little Mazda roadster convertible was Clay's second car. Seldom driven, he'd been encouraging me to make it my own for months but I'd resisted. It was too close to being the kept woman that everyone thought of me as. “I like the truck.”

“Because it belonged to Jimmy.” He slammed the remote down onto the couch and got to his feet. “There're three people in this relationship, you, me and Jimmy.”

“Oh, that's just totally ridiculous. Where do you get these stupid ideas?”

By lunch he'd left for Cedar Key without me.

The rain fell. I went to the police station to make a statement about the death of Gina Ross.

“It looks like an accident,” Sergeant Kerr informed me, rocking onto the back legs of his wooden chair. “She must have got out of the car to move the tree and got hit on the back of the head. Flying debris probably. We'll never know for sure.” Sergeant Kerr was the cop the movies had taught me to expect, disinterested and willing to let things slide.

“But when I found her she was lying on her back with her arms stretched out, like they would be if someone dragged her there. And why did she leave me?”

“Panic?” He lifted his shoulders as one finger reached inbetween the straining buttons of his shirt and delicately scratched his gut. “Or maybe she thought you had run off without her.”

“Bull.”

His lips disappeared into a hard line of irritation. “We've got your statement. Thank you for coming in.”

“Is Detective Styles in?”

“No.”

“I'd like to discuss this with him.”

“He's home resting.” The front legs of his chair hit the floor. “Like the rest of us, he was up for forty-eight hours straight with Myrna.”

“My keys were in Gina's purse. I need them back.” It was the only thing I'd figured out in the whole mess. I hadn't left my keys in the bar — Gina had taken them when I went to the kitchen to get her a sandwich.

Sergeant Kerr frowned. “I'll make a note. Someone will call you about them if they're really in her purse.”

Marley was back at the shelter. She was in the dining room with about a half-dozen other people sorting through donations. I tried to talk to her as she carried a plastic trash bag of donated clothing to the long table, pulled a jumble of clothes from it and began sorting.

I spoke as softly as I could so the people around us couldn't hear but I slowly became aware of the other conversations dropping off around us. “Look, can we go somewhere else to talk?” I asked.

“We have people waiting for clothes.” Her hands didn't even stop.

“It's okay, Sugar,” the woman beside Marley said and reached out to slide Marley's pile of clothes in with hers, “You go out in the kitchen and talk to your friend. We'll manage just fine.”

Marley looked up ready to argue but I said, “Thanks,” and quickly drew Marley towards the door.

“I can't get my head around it,” I told her as the door swung shut behind us.

“It was awful,” Marley soothed. “But you have to stop torturing yourself, stop thinking about it.”

“Gina went back there for a reason, but what?”

“You may never know.”

“That's what's driving me crazy, what if the cops never find out who did it.”

“You aren't even sure it wasn't an accident.”

“It was no accident. I keep thinking there's still a murderer out there. Who's next? And what if he knows about me?” “Your imagination is taking over. You've always had too much imagination.” She patted my arm and made for the sink full of coffee mugs. “You need to get busy with something else to take your mind off Gina's death.” She put in the plug and turned on the hot water. She squeezed dish soap into the water and started washing the mugs. “Come with me this afternoon.” She put a mug into the drying rack and picked up a tea towel and held it out towards me. “The church is forming work parties to help clean up the debris. It'll get your mind off yourself.”

Anger, sharp and bitter stabbed me. “Get clean with Jesus. Hell, yeah! Sounds like loads of fun.”

Marley, surprise on her face, lowered the towel.

I didn't say goodbye.

Melancholy days followed. All the golf courses were under water and closed until they could dry out, so I couldn't even go out and play off the miseries. Friends who fled the island before Myrna's arrival were either in no hurry to come back or were out doing good deeds like Marley. Normally I'd be out there throwing junk on the back of a truck with the rest of them but I was stuck in a real bad place.

So I sat on the balcony and stared at the abandoned boat, a thirty-foot sailboat that the storm had deposited ten feet inland from the pounding surf. Nothing is more useless than a boat out of water. Marley came by but I pretended to be out. I let the answering service pick up calls. And I didn't tell anyone about the nightmares.

No Clay, no golf. I spent days moping and not doing anyone any good, not even myself. My nights were spent with all the lights on and the TV blaring info-mercials while I prowled the penthouse restlessly.

My pride wouldn't let me give in and call Clay but I wanted him back. I wanted my life back. And I've never been good at just sitting.

I was so desperate and miserable I even thought of visiting Bernice. Well, mostly I thought of going out and telling her a few down-home truths about her son, about the times he'd pawned everything we owned or emptied our bank account to get in a poker game, tell her about the drugs and the women. And I wanted to tell her what I really thought of her. Hell, I guess she already knew what I thought of her.

Things would have turned out a whole lot different if I'd had someone to play with or work to do or if I hadn't been stuck in mental reruns of the hurricane, hadn't been focused on Gina. If Clay had stayed, if Marley had been more sympathetic none of what came next would have happened. But maybe that's just me trying to find someone else to blame — I do that.

The rain stopped. By ten o'clock the temperature was in the low nineties and the air was like a bathroom where the shower has been left running on hot for twenty minutes. Your clothes went limp and damp within seconds of setting foot outside the door. But the rain stopped.

I went to the Sunset. The metal shutters had been rolled up into their holders and from the outside the building looked just fine, but both the front stairs and the elevator were hung with closed signs. Around the back, I ran up the open metal steps, eager to see inside. At the top, the emergency door was propped open. My spirits lifted.

It was a disaster. The wind had peeled back the metal roof to let Myrna dump a couple of swimming pools full of water inside, crashing the ceiling onto the furniture. In the bar any walls still clinging to the studs were buckled and wavy and all the beautiful old leather chairs had been covered in sodden plaster and ceiling gunk. Out of this mess poked wood beams and one blade of the huge fan. I sat down on the floor in the middle of the chaos and bawled.

Jerry Ellington, the owner of the building, came over and patted me on the shoulder. His long face, creased and leathered, was even more woebegone than normal and he didn't look like he'd been sleeping well. “How long will it take to fix?” I asked.

“Months.” He dug a chair out of the debris, swept it off with his arm and folded his tall thin frame into it. “If I can find the materials and the people to do it.”

“But it will be the same, won't it?” like a kid needing reassurance.

He just lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I have to find a contractor. The guy I've got working out at the marina says he'll start here when he's finished over there . In the meantime…” He didn't finish.

I looked at the sky through a six-foot-square opening in the roof. “You should get FEMA to send one of those blue tarps for the roof. And a dumpster, you need to get one of those and start clearing this shit out. Mold loves wallboard, eats it and says yum.”

“I called around. There aren't any dumpsters available, from Tampa down to Fort Myers, every dumpster is spoken for.”

I pushed crumbling wallboard off another chair. “If you leave it like this we'll never save it.” A fine mist of grayish green mold was already hazing the leather and I could feel dampness creeping into the bum of my jeans. Those chairs had been there when I'd come to work at the Sunset, back when Miss Emma still owned it. “What's it like downstairs?”

“Where do you think all the water went from here? My tenants aren't coming back anytime soon.”

“I know someone. He's got an old dump truck. If we pull it into the alley we can get some guys to start pulling out the wallboard and insulation and start getting ready for the fix up.”

He sat with his forearms hanging down between splayed knees, the picture of defeat. “Where're we going to get bodies to do the work?”

“Miguel.” I hadn't thought it through but as soon as the name popped out I knew it was perfect.

“Who?”

“Miguel, our sous-chef.” He gave a nod of recognition but he wasn't as excited by the idea as I was. “Besides working here, he does all kinds of building projects on the side. With the Sunset closed, he isn't working. He'll be glad of a temporary job sorting this out and I bet he can come up with some other guys to help.”

Jerry shook his head. Defeat lay over him like a blanket.

“He came by and said he'd look for work until we were back up and running. He's probably left town already.”

I wasn't so easily diverted. “Leave it to me.” I was on fire now. “We've got to get started.”

Miguel lived in a trailer park for migrant workers set up on scrub farmland on the mainland east of I-75. Single-wide trailers from the fifties stood shoulder to shoulder between puddled dirt tracks in a barren and empty field. There were no numbers on them but it wouldn't have helped me if there were because I didn't have an address. But I'd been there for his daughter's birthday party last July and I hoped I'd remember the trailer when I saw it. Unique and one of a kind, it was painted a bright blue with yellow beach sunflowers growing in abundance around it.

One remaining blue wall still stood but the roof and the rest of the trailer was gone, along with the sunflowers. A large pile of belongings, covered with clear plastic sheets, squatted in the mud beside the blue wall. I got out of the car and stood staring at the remains of Miguel's life.

“Hi.”

I turned around. A round-faced girl, about nine years old, and with her black hair pulled severely back in a ponytail, grinned up at me.

“Rosie, wow, have you ever grown.” I held out my arms and she swooped into them. A golden child, I'd never seen her walk anywhere, she always danced or skipped. “Were you here when the hurricane came?” I asked.

She shook her head into my waist and said, “No.”

“Thank God. Where did you go?”

“To the high school.”

I squeezed her tight, imagining being a kid and coming home to find you didn't have a home, didn't have anything. “Where's your dad? Has he left to get work?”

“Not yet.” She pointed to the trailer on the left. “He's over there.”

We headed next door just as Miguel came out of the rusted single-wide trailer and met us at the concrete step.

“
Amigo
, your
casa
is not so good.”

“Yes, I'd noticed that.” He smiled.

I pointed at the mobile home behind him. “Are you living here?”

“
Si
. My brother-in-law took us in.”

I knew from my childhood the trailer would have two tiny bedrooms at the back, a bath in the middle and a living room and kitchen at the front. Thirty-six feet long and twelve feet wide doesn't allow for a lot of variation so they were all pretty much the same.

“My mother-in-law lives here as well so we are five adults and six children.” His smile made it seem like the happiest of arrangements.

I stroked Rosie's hair. Her arms circled my waist, telling me what was missing from my life. “So what's your plan?” I asked Miguel.

“My cousin up in Tampa has a job for me in the kitchen of a big Cuban restaurant. I leave today.”

“And your family?”

Miguel shook his head regretfully. “They stay here. I'll have a bed in an apartment with a bunch of other people. Not really my own bed. I'll sleep in it during the day and someone else will sleep in it at night when I'm working.” The smile was gone now. He shrugged regretfully. “What can I do?”

One night shortly after I'd left him for good, Jimmy came into the Sunset, drinking heavily and coming on to me, telling me how much he missed me. When the bar closed, Jimmy waited for me in the parking lot. Miguel came down the alley to find Jimmy pressing me up against my old Dodge. Miguel heard me say, “No, Jimmy,” even if Jimmy didn't. Miguel threw Jimmy to the pavement and kicked the crap out of him and after that Jimmy stayed away from the Sunset. And Miguel never let me go to my car alone again at the end of a late shift.

“I've got a better idea,” I told him. “I know where your family can stay, nothing fancy, a one-bedroom apartment out by the airport.”

If my mother came home before Miguel found a new place to live, she could always move into Clay's with me. Wouldn't he just love that? Ruth Ann in her faux leather and animal prints playing country and western music from morning 'til night and asking him personal questions. On the bright side, she'd be just as uncomfortable as Clay would be. Nothing like having your nearest and dearest miserable to put a smile on your face.

“You can work at the Sunset taking out the drywall and old carpeting for as many hours a day as you want at the same pay you made in the kitchen. By the time it's done, some other living arrangement is bound to turn up.”

Miguel grinned and hitched up his jeans. “Sounds good, Sherri, real good.”

I went to Ziggy Peek's looking for a dump truck. Uncle Ziggy lived alone in the center of a barricaded garbage heap along Tamiami Trail. Developers knocked on his door every week but Zig, a Vietnam vet with a dislike of neighbors and a love of stuff, scared them off.

Ziggy's junkyard encompassed about twenty acres surrounded by an eight-foot-high wood barricade with only a small indent in the wall to pull a vehicle off the road while you waited for the gate to open. I pulled in and honked. While I waited for the wood gate to swing inward, I checked out the aluminum hubcaps decorating the outside of the fortress to see if there was anything new and wonderful. At first Ziggy had nailed up a dozen or so to advertise his scrap business but the people driving along the highway had got in on the act and over the years hundreds and perhaps even thousands had been added, making it a landmark. “About a mile south of the hubcap place,” was part of a lot of directions for people heading south from Sarasota on the Tamiami Trail.

I was with a group of high school freshmen who'd stopped one night to nail up a hubcap. A shriek, like a woman being tortured, came from inside the barricade, sending terrified teens racing for their cars. It became the stuff of legends. Secretly, we never stopped believing what we heard that night was someone dying.

The barricade swung silently inward and I pulled forward to park in front of a rusted-out old construction trailer, hunkered down and melting back into the ground that had spawned it, but I didn't get out. I checked around me, seeing old cars, household appliances and rusted miscellaneous objects piled to the top of the fence.

The sound of a woman screaming in pain, a sound that brought back old terrors, froze the breath in my throat. A peacock, trailing its jeweled fan, strutted into the hard-packed shell drive. I hated those damn peacocks. Their cries scared the shit out of me as a kid and still did. Never having a strong grasp of reality, I still wasn't at all convinced it had been a peacock crying and not some desperate human being.

The proud fowl spread his trembling fan, making a dry rattling noise. Most of the time they were benign but I stayed put. I'd been chased by more than one of the creatures so I was watching real hard to see how aggressive he might be. Something crashed into the roof of the Miata.